The present invention relates to packed-based media capturing and, more particularly, but not exclusively to a system and methods for VoIP forwarding in a network.
There are many active means of IP recording, based on the concepts of forwarding from a VoIP telephony end-point, as well as other IP forwarding capable devices, such as IP forwarding agents, VoIP recording gateways, forwarding network appliances, etc. As a result, there arises a need to provide a protocol based method, for controlling VoIP forwarding devices in a computer network.
Currently, IP capture systems support two basic methods of recording, namely, passive sniffing recording, and active forwarding.
Passive recording is based on capturing raw IP packets, which are transmitted over the network, identifying them according to information found in the headers of the protocol and transport layers (such as IP and UDP), and dispatching them for recording to the various recording channels according to information found in the respective header. The whole process is conducted without any interfacing with the VoIP system and requires interfacing only with the lower networking layer.
Active recording, on the other hand, is based on forwarding of the requested RTP (real-time transport protocol—the Internet-standard protocol for the transport of real-time data including audio and video) packets (or any other packets of media) to designated sockets in the capture. The forwarding may be conducted either by a designated component in the VoIP system, or by a designated mediating agent. The active recording method enables the recording from VoIP telephony systems, as well as from traditional voice telephony systems, without complex interaction with the networking communication layer.